On A Mission (A Sermon in a Snowstorm)

On A Mission

Scriptures: Nehemiah 8:1-19, Psalm 19,   I Corinthians 12:12-31,  Luke 4:14-21

(Note:  Church was cancelled on January 24 due to a blizzard in Philadelphia that weekend. The sermon for the day is below.)

 

“Going home.”   Just two words, just three syllables, but what a range of emotions the words “going home” can stir up, especially if we’ve been away for a while. For those returning from military service, going home means family welcoming them back.  For those who’ve moved far from home, going home may mean reconnecting with the scenes and memories of childhood.   For many, the word “home” brings up feelings of being safe and loved and cared for.  Simon and Garfunkel’s song “Homeward Bound” may stir up some memories of our own homes:

               “Homeward bound, I wish I was homeward bound
               Home where my thought’s escapin’, home where my music’s playin’,

               Home where my love lies waiting silently for me…..”

For some, though, the phrase “going home” brings up memories, not of safety, but of anxiety, even terror.  If we grew up around violence or other abuse, going home may trigger traumatic memories, memories of fear and pain and anger.  The traumatic places of our childhood may trigger us to hyperventilate and break out in a cold sweat.  On the other hand, going home may bring healing, as we see that the people and places that brought us terror as a child no longer have the power to hurt us as adults – the people who frightened us as children, who at the time seemed ten feet tall, we now see on our level, as fellow adults, older and perhaps wiser, or perhaps not.   We may find that the encounters that terrified us and that are forever seared into our memories, have completely fallen off the radar of those who intimidated us – they may not remember a thing, even though we can never forget.

On the other hand, regardless whether our memories of home are fond or fearful, as the title of a book from Tom Wolfe states, “you can’t go home again.”   Oh, you can travel to your hometown, return to a geographical location.  But you won’t find it as you left it.  Time’s marched on, and people have moved on, and likely some places have changed.  Perhaps the general store where as a child you bought penny candy is now a check cashing place or a pawnshop.  Or if the town has gentrified, maybe a Starbucks.  Perhaps the roads have changed – the two-lane road that used to be a major transportation artery has been bypassed by a new four-lane highway, and so traffic that used to run through town, bringing shoppers and tourists, is now routed around town, and local businesses suffer the loss of traffic.  Perhaps the church building where you attended worship faithfully as a child is now being used by a congregation of another denomination, or even another faith – or has been converted to secular use, perhaps as a performing arts space or loft apartments.  And even if some of the stores and businesses remain the same, the people behind the counter, that used to know you, are gone, and new people are there who don’t know you from a can of paint – they’re perfectly polite, but they’re strangers to you, and you to them.  And you’ve changed as well – you’re not the person you were when you left.  You have more years behind you, more life experience, for good and bad.  You may recognize people you knew growing up and they may recognize you, but they will likely relate to you as the person you were, not the person you are now.  Our memories of home are often fixed, static, frozen in time, but the realities of home have moved on, have changed, for good or bad.

Going home……in our reading from Luke’s gospel, Jesus is going home, returning to his hometown of Nazareth.  Nazareth, where Mary and Joseph settled after the birth in Bethlehem and the flight as refugees to Egypt.  Nazareth, where Joseph worked as a carpenter – the actual Greek word, tekton, is broader, referring to a builder, a general craftsman, mostly used to describe woodworkers, but in some contexts could also refer to stonemasons – from the Greek word tekton comes our word architect.  

Jesus was the local carpenter, builder, fix-it guy.  His neighbors in Nazareth had watched him grow up, probably had bought tables and chairs from his family or brought Jesus items to fix or mend.  Jesus had been away for a short while – he went to John the Baptist to be baptized, and spent 40 days in the wilderness, and then he began his ministry, and word spread of all that he did and taught.  But he hadn’t been away that long.  After preaching and healing in Capernaum and other nearby villages, Jesus somehow felt it was time for him to be going home.  When he returned to Nazareth, people expected Jesus to fit into his usual role as the local carpenter, building, fix-it guy, to do what he’d done for the past 30 years.  But Jesus had been through transformative experiences – the baptism by John – with the spirit coming on Jesus like a dove and God’s voice from heaven calling Jesus “beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” - and the temptation in the wilderness – and Jesus had no intention of going back to making tables and chairs.  Jesus knew that God had called him to something greater.  The Jesus who was coming home to Nazareth after his baptism and time of trial was very different from the Jesus who had left Nazareth just a few short weeks or months before.

So Jesus came home, and went to the local synagogue.  He stood up to read the text for the day, from the prophet Isaiah, and what he read was a description of a prophet Isaiah bringing good news to a desolated people, in its original setting the prophet bringing good news to the Judean refugees who had returned from Babylon – and let’s hear it again:

               "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor."

And then Jesus sat down, and everyone looked at him expectantly.  And Jesus said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 

In effect, at least as Luke tells the story, these words are in effect Jesus’ mission statement, his inaugural address as he begins his mission.  Jesus connects his mission to these ancient promises that were made to the refugees returning from Babylon, these ancient promises that still sustained the Jewish people under Roman occupation.  Jesus uses the ancient prophecies to bring message of good news to the people in the here and now of his day …..and he’s not just making a general proclamation of goodwill to everybody, but lifting up particular categories of people who desperately need to hear good news – the poor, the captives, the blind, the oppressed, those in need of the Lord’s favor.  He’s very explicitly saying that these lives, overlooked by most, matter in the eyes of God. These lives matter. Now, all lives matters in the eyes of God – Jesus says elsewhere that a sparrow cannot fall without God’s notice, how much less can a human being suffer without God’s notice – but the poor, the captives, the blind, and the oppressed are the ones who were ignored by the society of his day – and so they are the ones Jesus felt compelled to lift up.  It’s notable that in Isaiah, the words about “the year of the Lord’s favor” are immediately followed by the words “and the day of vengeance of our God” – but Jesus left off those words.  Proclaiming the Lord’s favor was Jesus’ mission; proclaiming God’s vengeance evidently was not.

The peoples’ initial response is favorable – “all spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth”….but it doesn’t take long before they start having second thoughts….”hey, isn’t this Joseph’s son, the carpenter?”  Who does he think he is, anyway, to be instructing us? And as he continues on, he tells them that God’s grace extends not only to them, but to Gentiles such as the widow of Zarephath in Sidon, who showed hospitality to the prophet Elijah, and to Naaman the Syrian, who was cured of leprosy by the prophet Elisha.  By the time Jesus wraps up his sermon, the crowd is ready to throw him off a cliff.

How could Jesus’ proclamation of good news rile up the people in Jesus’ hometown, who had known him for years and years, enough to make them want to kill him?  As Jesus noted, “no prophet is accepted in his own hometown.”  Those who had watched Jesus grow up knew him, knew his family – in Matthew’s and Mark’s version of the same story, they say “Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?  And are not all his sisters with us?”  They knew the work he had done as a carpenter, a builder, a tekton.  They knew Jesus, all right – knew him just well enough to miss the grace and wisdom that God had bestowed on Jesus in his baptism and temptation.  If some recognized religious authority had spoken these words to them, the folks in Jesus’ hometown would have heard them gladly, at least to a point.  But they weren’t about to receive religious instruction from the local carpenter.

Then there’s that phrase “the year of the Lord’s favor”.  That phrase had a specific meaning for the Jewish people – it was the year of Jubilee described in Leviticus 25, when every fifty years, all debts were to be cancelled and all land lost to debt returned to the original owners, when slaves were to be freed, when the people were to sound the trumpet and “proclaim liberty throughout the land to all the inhabitants thereof” – and if those words sound familiar, it’s because they’re inscribed on the Liberty Bell downtown at Independence Mall.  This year of the Lord’s favor, when debts were to be cancelled and slaves and captives freed, was Jesus’ vision for society.  And indeed, the Jubilee year, the year of the Lord’s favor, is good news – good news for the poor, for captives, for those in debt.  For those who collect on debt and for slave owners, not so much.  And so some in Jesus’ hometown may have felt threatened by Jesus’ words.

And then Jesus went on to proclaim good news, not only for them, but for others on the margins of society – the poor, captives, blind people, oppressed people, even for Gentiles.  The people in Jesus’ hometown were willing to hear good news for themselves.  But good news for others…..that was another matter.  For some there, good news for others sounded like bad news for them.   Jesus was inviting them to see a larger, wider vision of God’s work in the world, and the folks in Jesus’ hometown were offended.  They wanted a God who was small and tidy and predictable, who was focused just on them, and not a God so unpredictable and extravagant as to care for outsiders and even Gentiles.

Where do we find ourselves in this story?  How do we hear Jesus’ words of good news – words that are good news for us, but not only for us.  Are we willing to hear God’s word, even when spoken by the most unlikely people?  Are we able to hear God’s word of good news, even though it may cause disruption in our lives, even though it may cost us?  Are we willing to be God’s living word of good news to others?  And what would that look like?

“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  May these words from Isaiah quoted by Jesus be fulfilled among us.  May we at Emanuel bring good news to the poor and liberation to those in captivity – captivity to addiction, to discrimination, to injustice.  May we hear God’s word of good news for ourselves, and proclaim it to our neighbors who are dying for a word of good news.  Amen.